Laura Gilman - Dragon Justice

The cab dumped me out on the corner rather than fight the delivery van double-parked and blocking traffic, and I walked the half block to “The Westerly.” I had laughed when I saw the name on the formal, cream-colored change-of-address card delivered in the mail a few weeks before. Seeing it, though— J’s building was called Branderford. I wanted to live in a building that had a name. And a doorman. And…

And, pointless. I couldn’t afford an apartment in a building with a name and a doorman. Not yet, anyway.

Doormen in New York City are more than guys—or women—who open doors and accept deliveries. They’re the first line of security for the residents. So I was prepared to do the usual who-I’m-here-to-see routine—I was assuming Wren, being Talent, would not have bought into one of those places with the full electronic security systems. To my surprise, though, the doorman riding the simple but splashy marble counter merely looked up, nodded, and pressed a button, summoning the elevator. I let a slender tendril rise, and it was met by a similar one from the doorman.

Huh. Not so much a surprise that the doorman was a Talent—we tended to non-office jobs as a whole: less chance to current-spike the tech—but that Wren had apparently put me on an all-clear list. I guess she was hoping I’d still show up with lasagna every now and then.

The elevator was clean and well maintained, with pretty architectural touches that said the building was a prewar renovation. My estimate of how much she paid for the place went up, considerably. Ouch. But she could afford it: you didn’t hire The Wren for cut-rate work.

The apartment was on the top floor—Wren liked not having anyone thumping above her, considering the odd hours she slept. Twenty-four J was at the end of the hallway, the fifth down, which meant she had a corner apartment. My estimate of the cost went up, again. Damn.

The door opened even before I got there, and the moment I saw two expectant faces, one brown-eyed and human, one red-eyed and ursine, staring at me, I apologized. “No food this time, sorry. Will you take a rain check?”

It wasn’t as though I was such an amazing cook—they were just that bad at it. I wasn’t sure Wren knew how to use her stove to do more than reheat pizza, and the demon…

PB had agile paws, but his short, black-padded fingers ended in sharp white nails that probably didn’t make it too easy to cook. Certainly I’d never gotten any indication that he even had a kitchen, wherever he lived.

The first time I had seen the demon, it had been in an all-night diner, during the ki-rin job. He had been the first demon I’d ever encountered—maybe the only, since I still wasn’t sure if the angular shadow that had passed me late one night had been a demon, despite the glimpse of pale red eyes under its slouch hat. There were a lot of strange and dangerous things in the Cosa Nostradamus, and a lot of them didn’t care to be identified by humans.

My hosts let me in despite the lack of lasagna. I took a minute to case the joint, noting that, as expected, Wren hadn’t done damn-all to decorate and that she needed curtains for that wall of windows, no matter how nice the view.

“Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” Wren said, then added, “probably.”

It was an old joke, or a year-old, anyway, which was as long as I’d known the thief well enough to have jokes. Wren Valere was not only a Retriever; to a lot of folk she was The Retriever. Like Pietr, she had the ability to disappear from sight, slide through barriers, and sneak into anywhere she wasn’t supposed to be, only unlike Pietr she’d gone for a life of… I couldn’t exactly call it crime, since a lot of the jobs I knew she’d taken involved reclaiming objects for their rightful owners. But she moved in a gray area I tried not to look too deeply in. We were friends, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Also, Wren and her partner, Sergei, and PB, had been responsible for keeping the city from going down in flames earlier this year. Everyone knew, even if nobody talked about it. Whatever forces had set us up to war, she had taken them on and won.

No matter what side of the law you were on, you did not want Wren Valere pissed at you. Thankfully, from the moment I’d met her, sent over by Stosser to check into things when her apartment had been bugged by forces unknown, we’d hit it off. Totally nonsexual—I have a useful sense for who’s off the market, and Valere and her partner, Sergei, were like peanut and butter.

“Come on in,” Wren said, even though I had already gone well past the door frame. She might have been ironic; it was tough to tell sometimes with her. “Sit down. I think there’s furniture somewhere under all the boxes. You want coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

I found a space on the dark green sofa, which was definitely new. Wren’s old place had a sort of bedraggled assortment of furniture, like she’d never quite thought about the fact that guests would need a place to sit. This… I sensed PB’s paw in this.

PB found a footstool under a garbage bag that looked like it was filled with pillows, and perched himself on top, tossing the bag onto the polished hardwood floor. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me, his rounded, white-furred ears twitching ever so slightly, like a radarscope listening for something human ears would miss.

I looked back. If I’d ever been uneasy under that weirdly red gaze, it had faded a long time ago. Angeli were bastards, but demon, far as my experience went, were loyal and honest, if occasionally short-tempered. Trust the Cosa to screw up their naming conventions.

“It’s a fatae thing,” I said, to head off any concerns Valere might have had about my showing up unannounced.

“Of course it is,” PB muttered. Wren handed me a plain white mug filled with caffeinated nirvana, and I took a deep sip. She might not be able to cook, but Valere could magic up a serious pot of coffee.

“And it’s delicate,” I added.

“Of course it is,” the Retriever said.

I thought about how much to tell them, zipped through the best- and worst-case scenarios, and shrugged mentally. Delicate, and no-footprint, but Stosser had set me to this scent, and I’d follow it best I could, and that meant using my sources as best I could. And for these two, that meant telling them the truth.

Just not all the truth.

“A girl’s gone missing. Baby girl. Seven years old.”

They went the same place I did, hearing her age: just the right age for a Fey-snatch, if someone were willing to break the Treaty.

“The Fey say they don’t have her.” Let them think I already checked that avenue, rather than taking it on faith from a client. I thought again of the Lord’s expression, and restrained a shudder. No, clients lied, and the Fey lied even more, but not in this specific instance. They wanted to know who had her, enough to give Stosser a blank IOU in return.

PB humphed. “No chance she went willingly?”

That was the other way a breed could acquire humans: glamour them into coming of their own accord. We called it fairy-dusting, and it wasn’t covered under any treaties.

“She’s seven, PB. Doesn’t matter what she wanted. She’s still a baby. Babies can’t go willingly.” Wren sat on the hassock opposite me, looking thoughtful. “You’ve checked into the usual gossip spots, I assume, otherwise you wouldn’t be going to me.”

“Not yet.”

That took them both aback, PB’s ears going flat in surprise.

“The usual spots take time, and greasing. I need to know, hot and fast, if there’s any gossip in the fatae community, about newcomers, maybe someone out to prove a point, or score a grudge.” I hesitated, then unreeled a little more truth to hook them with. “It feels like a setup. Someone’s trying to make it look like the Treaty’s been broken.”